


What A Wonderful World

by TheCityLightShow



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Happy Ending, Light Angst, Other, implied James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanoff, mentioned Steve Rogers/Tony Stark - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 23:52:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7953955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCityLightShow/pseuds/TheCityLightShow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The city is overgrown.</p><p>Can you call a city a city when there’s no people? Is a city a city when the only life is plants and bugs, the only movement faint rustles and wind high up above? Is it a city, or is it just a skeleton?</p><p>Regardless, this skeletal city is where he’s meant to be, he knows. There’s a holder on his wrist for the holographic chips he’s been collecting, and the voice natters away in the background as he lines up the images and checks. At first, he’d thought the voice was Howard, but a car crash in his minds eye let’s him know how impossible that is. That means that this is the kid he forced them to leave behind and that’s actually worse because he’s helping and he cares when really he doesn’t deserve anything of the sort.</p><p>He’s following the voice’s instructions though, because he’d come out of cryo shivering and alone, so far into the future that for the 34 moons he’s seen come and go, he’s seen nothing but insects and plants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What A Wonderful World

**Author's Note:**

> This is something that just sort of... happened, after listening to a cover of What A Wonderful World by Joseph William Morgan ft. Shadow Royale on repeat for an hour. (I can't find the link!) 
> 
> I think the idea of this is that HYDRA timelocked Bucky's cryochamber to open automatically very very far in the future: so for Steve, being Tony Stark's beau is extremely useful, because why would Tony let a little thing like _time_ stop him? Anyway... read, hopefully enjoy!  <3

The city is overgrown.

Can you call a city a city when there’s no people? Is a city a city when the only life is plants and bugs, the only movement faint rustles and wind high up above? Is it a city, or is it just a skeleton?

Regardless, this skeletal city is where he’s meant to be, he knows. There’s a holder on his wrist for the holographic chips he’s been collecting, and the skeleton of the buildings wrapped in vines matches the holo-coin he retrieved from an underground bunker at an old army camp. The voice natters away in the background as he lines up the images and checks. At first, he’d thought the voice was Howard, but a car crash in his mind's eye lets him know how impossible that is. That means that this is the kid he forced them to leave behind and that’s actually worse because he’s _helping_ and he _cares_ when really he doesn’t deserve anything of the sort.

He’s following the voice’s instructions though, because he’d come out of cryo shivering and alone, so far into the future that for the 34 moons he’s seen come and go, he’s seen nothing but insects and plants.

Most buildings are nothing but hollow shells. The floors and walls within have been torn apart by vines and time. In the buildings that the man – Tony, Bucky knows his name is Tony and yet it doesn’t feel like he has the right to use it – and his holograms lead him into, he finds titanium boxes, to which the little, intricately crafted holo-coins are key. Each contains water, protein bars and another holo-coin. It’s a scavenger hunt and a test of his gut instinct...but it’ll be worth it.

He slides the blade he was left in the first crate outside of his icy prison out of its strapping against his thigh, and cuts his way into yet another hollow remnant of humanity. (Hollow in an entirely different way to the skeletons slumped outside the room he awoke, each with a hole in the sternum and a bullet through the skull). The message he’s memorised over the 7 moons it’s taken him to get there plays on repeat in his head.

“... _you should approach from the south side, I think, and once you’ve found the main entrance you want to go in for twenty paces, right for six and then dig...”_

The floor is stone but there’s a handle at the end of the steps. It’s going through the motions to remove the floor and haul out the crate, but there’s an edge this time, a sense of urgency that tingles through his body, his blood, his bones in a way that’s undeniable. He removes the holo-coin from the contraption on his wrist and presses it into the locking mechanism with shaking hands.

It’s the same package inside, but for once he doesn’t pause to examine the holo-coin. It’s an inch in diameter, golden, but he doesn’t pause to look at the design like he has the rest. He slumps against the crate with his backpack at his side and slips it into place.

 

_The man who sits down in front of him sits down cross-legged in a way he could be sat opposite Bucky. He looks tired and weary, and something about the hair at the edge of his temples seems lighter than the rest, but with the image awash in blue, Bucky can’t tell why._

“ _Chip number 9, Barnes. The next building will be your last.” He states it so easily, rubbing a hand across the goatee on his chin. “We’re coming to get you from there. If you’re as quick as we hope, we’ll see you there on day 43. If not... we’ll be there for an hour, once every three days, for the next few weeks. I don’t know what the future will be like, though. You might take longer. The plates might have shifted – but we’ll bring you back.” He smiles at the camera, more determination than hope, and his gaze flicks away from the camera, just for a moment. Something softens in his gaze before he looks back, but he’s giving instructions to head north now, as easy as ever._

 _He gets up to walk away like normal, but the blue haze remains and Bucky can hear voices – one of the man who has become his guide in this future world, and one who he knows, he_ _**has** _ _to know. The conversation wasn’t meant for him, but he listens anyway._

“ _We’ll get him back, Cap. He’ll make it there, and we’ll be waiting for him.”_

“ _I know, it’s just... five hundred and seventy two years, Tony.”_

“ _He won’t have felt a second of it. If we manage it first time within the hour window, we won’t even change the past.” A pause. “Oh Steven... you know I would change it if I could.” A quiet sniffle._

“ _I wouldn’t want you to.” And a choked off laugh. “I happen to like the future. I just wish he wasn’t so far lost to it.”_

“ _I’m working on it!” A true laugh, a little watery, but it’s a sound Bucky can’t help but love. Those two seconds on repeat for the rest of his lonely existence would make him happy. “A wedding present from me to you.”_

_There’s footsteps across the blue, a laugh and a crash, and the blue disappears._

 

The holo-coin pops out then. Bucky fingers it gently, but when he lays it on his leg, he leaves the design facing down. He has nine moons to get to the building – and the most one has taken is seven. He can afford to camp here for the night. He pulls the previous coins out of his pocket, lays them out in order with the designs facing up.

He remembers why some of them are important now, he’s pretty sure. The first is a key, with the words “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.” curled around the edge neatly. He still doesn’t get why there’s a key, for he sees fire and blue and _red_ when he thinks of those words: but he knows those words, the promise they make, and he smiles to know that they’ll keep it. Next comes a shield, with stars and stripes and “It’s growing on me” and then there’s a smile, a blond man in a neat uniform, and a fondness to haze the image. Bucky thinks he might’ve been joking when he said “you’re keeping the suit right?”, but the mantle of Captain America was _made_ for Steve, only in the way that Steve made _it_ when he and Agent Carter – Penny? Peggy? It’s not quite there yet, not a wholly solid memory for him to catch – decided to metaphorically shove it up Phillips' ass.

The third one feels like the most important, a small angel wing insignia with “I had him on the ropes” hooked underneath. There’s cold and there’s falling but there’s a scrappy little kid in an alleyway too, and that one’s clearer to see and kinder to hold onto. The next is a star, and there’s no words – but Bucky doesn’t need them, he knows too well what it’s for. The fifth one he has to fish out of his breast pocket, where he’d safely buttoned it in.

There’s a girl there, and he knows her as both Natalia in his head and Natasha in the holograms. He knows the grace of her step, the steadiness of her hand and the warmth of her skin. He looks at the engraved silver, and can see the fire of her hair. She’s there, at the end of this, the holo-man told him so.

He hopes that she waited and hopes that she moved on. She deserves better than shared blood on shaking hands, and should want more than a man she could hardly have known.

Number six is a man that he knows he killed, but the words are “I forgive you”. He can’t think about that one, can’t cope with the shot and the crash and the crying and the _accusation_ that comes with it. Howard Stark had been driving drunk, and died thinking Bucky had been HYDRA all along like there wasn’t a red star on a shoulder that wasn’t actually his. He scoops that one up back into his pocket so that he doesn’t have to look at it anymore. Seven isn’t anything he knows now, but it feels like a promise. It’s an A, with a circle and an arrow within the design. There’s no words with it and he doesn’t recognise it, but he keeps it all the same. The most recent one was a ring, simple and easy, and the words in the middle read “may I?”

Bucky hasn’t laughed like that since- since- since before he can remember, and that’s more and more every day. He stares down at the words a while, not realising how dark it’s getting until the coin slips from his fingers and he can’t see where it goes. He scrambles for it with the light of the A coin, and freezes once he’s got it, listening in case there’s anything around that he might’ve alerted to his presence.

There’s nothing, always and forever endless nothing, and he settles back against the crate. The holo-coin keeps playing, and he finds his newest addition. He flips it over quickly, like it will calm his racing heart.

It’s a tower.

Something niggles at him there, like he’s seeing it on paper not in person, not quite as it is. “You have a home here” is all it says, and Bucky’s just got dust in his eye, that’s all.

 

It’s not until he’s looking back on the building he’d encamped himself in that he recognises the tower as Tony’s.

 

It takes him too long to reach the last building, and the sun is rising over the desolate horizon on day 43 when he sees it at last. It’s chasing away moon 42 and Bucky _runs_ , runs because he has to be there, has to see Stevie and Natalia and tell Tony that he may because god, Steve’s voice has never been so soft than in the message he wasn’t meant to hear.

He wants to remember the recipe for Sarah Rogers' pie, because Steve could never get it quite right and somebody has to. He wants to meet all these people – the Avengers, the A on the coin – he wants to know them for himself, see them with his eyes and not the soldier's. For the first time since all he wanted was to die so HYDRA couldn't hurt him, he _wants_.

He runs face first into the door of the building, snarling when it barely even flexes under his considerable weight. He rips away the growth and the vines and yet still the door will not budge. He has no way of knowing the time, he just has words not meant for him on repeat; _If we manage it first time within the hour window, we won’t even change the past._ He doesn't know what past they're trying not to change, but if the sci-fi comics he can picture on his best days taught him anything, it's that changing the past is _very bad_.

“LET. ME. IN.” He’s screaming and he’s broken at last because the _door isn’t moving_ , it won’t give way and surely he needs to be in the building for them to get to him, right? He needs them, oh god he needs in, he just wants a _home_.

He continues to throw himself at the door, choking back sobs because he can't deal with that now, won't cry til night hits and he realises he's missed them. He will not be defeated by what is surely only rusted up iron and-

There’s a crack and a flash and-

“B-Bucky?”

He whirls, and the shorter man is stood in front, goatee as neat in brown as it was in blue and a mass of metal in his calloused hands, but it was the blond who spoke, it was _Steve_ and Bucky can’t help his grin. His lips are suddenly dry, and licks them as he stumbles forward a step. Tony steps aside and Bucky will tell him in a minute, because this is more important. This is-

“Stevie.” He returns, voice cracking, and then his ribs are being crushed and his feet aren’t even on the ground because Steve has never done anything by halves. He clutches back as hard as he is able, grips at this unbreakable version of Steve, and _lets go_.


End file.
